Archive for the ‘UCLA’ Category

The talk of the nation this week has been the over-celebration penalty that was called on Washington QB Jake Locker. We never gave our thoughts, so after everyone has, we will. Bad Rule. Correct Call. According to the rules, you can’t throw the ball high in the air. The ball Locker threw was in the air for 2.36 seconds. That qualifies as high. Should that rule be in the book? No. But it is and the official made the correct call. Besides, UW has to make the PAT, no matter how far it is. If you are truly a team trying to turn it around, you make that kick.

The Washington State game against Baylor has been moved to tomorrow night at 5:30. We were mildly excited because we were looking forward to relaxing after work and watching the game. Then it hit us, the game now won’t be on TV. Understandably, this is what’s best for the people of the Texas coast but, selfishly, we wish we could watch it.

We’ll find out this week if UCLA is the real deal. BYU sneanked out of Seattle with a win so they should be on high alert this week. The game is in Provo so it is going to be very important that the good Kevin Craft shows up for the Bruins.

USC-Ohio State is the game of the weekend. Everyone is focusing on Beanie Wells’ injured foot but we’re more interested in seeing how Mark Sanchez plays. OSU returns most of their defense, a defense that is considerably better that Virginia’s. Sanchez is going to need to play well, it doesn’t matter how many 5-star RBs the Trojans have.

Stanford has another tough game this week visiting TCU. The Horn Frogs are another one of those teams that it seems every year are looking to burst the BCS bubble. This game time has also been changed to an earlier start time on Saturday to avoid the hurricane. Stanford showed last week that they still have many holes to fill.

***Isn’t it nice when 18-year old kids are going to play a prominent role with your football team. That’s an advantage if your a high school coach, a very scary proposition if your a college coach.***

Berekly, CA – California head coach Jeff Tedford named his starter, Kevin Riley will start against Michigan State. This means that Nate Longshore will be watching from the sideline, at least for the first few games barring injury.

Eugene, OR – Rob Moseley gives us his season predictions for the Ducks. Rob approached his predictions a little differently, rather than just predicting each game he assigned a value to each game that represented how many times he believes Oregon would win if the teams played 10 times.

Los Angeles, CA – UCLA is preparing for their Labor Day battle with Tennessee by outlining which freshman will play. If your math is correct, 9 true freshman will not redshirt and help the Bruins this season.

Tempe, AZ – Freshman are making an impact with ASU as well, WR Gerell Robinson is catching on and understanding the more complex offense better. A better name for the “bubble”, how about the Sun Devil Sauna???? No. We don’t think so either.

Pullman, WA – New head coach Paul Wulff gave the Cougars a grade of C+ for their first week of efforts. While the players may not be picking up the new playbook as fast as the coaches would like, they are definitely getting the hitting part down pat. A little fire after the play is over, showing that a 10th-place prediction doesn’t mean much in the land of wheat.

Seattle, WA – The University of Washington may soon hire a new Athletic Director. All we can say is, it’s about damn time. Having been without a permanent hire since January, the Huskies need to find some stability in their athletic programs. They currently have a head football coach who knows less about his starting QB’s injury than the kid’s father. Or at least Scott Locker is willing to share the information with the media, while the tight-lipped Willingham prefers to play dumb. Also, moving over to the Sports Blogging Network in the next week or two is the UW Football Blog.

Eugene, OR – Big love for Oregon DB (what position does he really play? Safety? Rover? We don’t know, but want to.) Patrick Chung who Sporting News says might be the best defensive player in the country! It seems everybody in the conference is having QB problems, but Oregon’s QBs looked decent in their scrimmage Saturday. It’s only 19 more days until the hated Huskies arrive in Eugene.

Los Angeles, CA – With UCLA starter Ben Olson getting hurt and subsequently being out eight weeks, the QB race is suddenly wide open again. The coaches want to have a starter in place in exactly two weeks, so we’ll see who decides to take the reigns.

Tempe, AZ – The nomadic Ryan McFoy may have finally found his place on the field, as a linebacker. It has to be tough getting moved around like that, although forgetting your thigh pads will get you noticed.

Berekley, CA – After a week of practice and three days in pads, injuries at California are starting to add up. It’s good to hear that RB Jahvid Best is finally returning to full health, something that Cal will need if it wants to finish near the top of the conference.

Palo Alto, CA – With a new defensive coordinator, the Cardinal defense returns 11 players who made starts last season and hope to improve on last year’s ninth-worst Pac-10 defense. In recruiting news, Stanford has offered a scholarship to Joe Montana’s son. Nick Montana is currently a junior who is competing for the starting QB job at Oaks Christian High.

The Pac-10 has always been about tradition. They don’t want to expand and have even refused a plus-one system that college football fans have been clamoring for ever since the BCS was invented. The Rose Bowl should be Pac-10 v. Big 10, they say. If tradition really matters, why not let USC and UCLA both wear their home jerseys for the rivalry game?

Who doesn’t want to see the UCLA powder blue and the Trojan cardinal red slamming into each other in late November/early December? If the teams agree to do it (which, apparently they have) it will cost them one timeout each half. We aren’t sure if that means both teams lose a T.O. or just the team wearing the “wrong” jersey color. Bets are it’s just the away team that gets penalized.

The last time both teams wore the home jerseys was 1982. It has been 25 years. It’s time to drop the stupid rule about losing a timeout (What the hell kind of rule is that anyway?) and let the fans see the tradition the Pac-10 works so hard to protect.

Everyone knows that Neuheisel ran a pretty loose ship when he was at Washington, so does this suspension mean he is finally tightening up? It would make sense. His carefree behavior at UW and Colorado caused a lot of suspicion and heartburn for the ADs of those schools. He may finally realize that if he wants to continue to coach Division I FBS football he has to clean up his act.

Doing this for the first game at his alma mater shows he means business. Possibly another sign that Slick Rick finally is starting to get it.